We’re proud to reveal that a childhood dream or ours – if there are such things as collective dreams – is about to come true: our first boxed game. And we’re not talking a modern plastic excuse to contain a DVD, but an old-school, ultra-cool cardboard box full of goodies. A true Collector’s Edition of SteamWorld Dig. Dig it!

It’s the fabulous folks over at IndieBox, headed by the jovial James Morgan, who back in May offered to box SteamWorld Dig for us. For those of you unfamiliar with IndieBox, their idea is to take exceptional indie games and create something really special and exclusive – every month! Past highlights include Brütal Legend, Luftrausers, MouseCraft, Forced, Escape Goat and Teslagrad.

Sign up for their subscription service before November 21, use the code “SecretDig” and get 15% off on this wonderful edition of SteamWorld Dig!

These are the contents of the SteamWorld Dig Collector’s Edition:

Custom Box

Soundtrack CD featuring the world première of a new, previously unreleased track from SteamWorld Heist!

SteamWorld Dig Playing Cards designed by our very own art director Tobias Nilsson!

But wait – what has this got to do with SteamWorld Heist? How does the Collector’s Edition of SteamWorld Dig qualify for a #Heistuesday post? Well, incidentally (or accidentally?) James came up with an idea that took Heist in a new direction. We’ll announce this as next week’s #Heistuesday.

Hi! Julius here. If it’s one thing we at Image & Form love just as much as video games (and cake), it’s board games. We actually have a shelf full of them. We’ve for a long time imagined to ourselves how a board game based on SteamWorld Dig would work. And while we don’t have anything solid in the works we’ve got a pretty good picture of how we would design it.

But our friend Michael Nanthachack recently e-mailed me a killer concept of a SteamWorld Dig board game. In short: He beat us to it. Michael has got some really cool ideas, so I’ll let him take the reins and explain it for you.

Michael’s SteamWorld Dig: The Board Game

The core concepts behind SteamWorld Dig that I love so much are the digging and exploration aspects. Getting ore, selling it to get money in order to buy upgrades so you can progress further is such a great gameplay loop. It’s something I wanted to see how well it transferred to board games, something I know the wonderful folks at Image & Form enjoy as much as I do.

So the first thing to focus on is the act of exploring in board game form. The most common act of exploring something in a board game is the act of flipping a card or a tile, which fits rather nicely, so I adopted that functionality for the game. Using an action point allowance system where you have 4 points in order to do any number of actions any amount of times within those 4 points, we have such available actions like moving (left and right), digging, jumping, selling, etc.

How the game works with these things in place is that players have a board (see board 1 below) that comprises of the town of Tumbleton at the top, what we can call the Surface, and the Underground below. Each of those squares will be covered with a random tile according to the level of the row on the board. It’s these squares that players are exploring through the digging action. A variety of things from ore, enemies, empty spaces, and wells are possible.

Click on the images to see the game boards:

But the other thing that makes SteamWorld Dig great is the upgrade system. The gameplay loop doesn’t exist if you have nothing to spend your money on, so it needed to be an important part to the board game. Thus, you can return to the Surface to sell your collected ore so you can buy various upgrades for different parts of your Cowbot (see board 2).

The other thing you can buy, however, are Victory Points, which is what you need to win the game. The game ends when someone reaches the bottom of their board and play continues until everybody has gotten the same amount of turns. After that last turn, players would compare their total Victory Points and declare a winner of the game: The best cowbot miner Tumbleton has ever seen! (At least until the next game.)

Well, those are the core features of what I envision a board game based off of SteamWorld Dig to be. Hope you guys enjoyed that, and maybe one day we can play it 😉

Question: Which classic board game would you like to see get a SteamWorld Dig cross-over treatment?

If you also want to contribute to the Image & Form blog, e-mail your blog post ideas to julius@imageform.se.

http://imageform.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/SteamWorld_dig-Board_game.jpg3651300Julius Guldboghttp://imageform.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/if_logo.pngJulius Guldbog2014-10-02 06:40:062018-06-18 15:41:21How Would SteamWorld Dig Work as a Board Game?

Hi everybody! This is Julius. Today we have a special guest blog from Jonas Kjellberg (one of the SteamWorld Dig composers). We’re so excited he agreed to share some of his ace composing secrets with all of you in this really interesting story.

In the spring of 2013 I got an interesting e-mail from the nice folks at Image & Form. They were putting the finishing touches on SteamWorld Dig and needed a last minute track for the game – the main theme. Did I have any ideas?

My name is Jonas Kjellberg, but you may know me as Wrench. I am a contemporary composer and recent graduate from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. A few years ago I attended GameX (an annual game convention in Sweden) looking for networking opportunities. Mainly I was attending to meet the team behind Unmechanical, for which I later composed my first game soundtrack. While there I also chatted with some very friendly developers who showed their game Anthill. Those friendly developers were Image & Form.

Fast forward a couple of years, I got word that SteamWorld Dig was in production. I dug around in my neatly organized random-business-cards-from-nice-people-I’ve-met-box and sent a friendly e-mail to the CEO. Unfortunately I was not able to get the gig as composer this time, but they were so nice to me that I made an effort to stay in touch.

I have spent years honing my craft of experimental electronic music, working with abstract textures and complex timbres. A strong Wild West motif with key words such as robots and steampunk was, to say the least, far away from my usual repertoire.

The first time I pitched my ideas for the game, I had sketched something more of a slow and dark dystopian track featuring a slide guitar. But one day when taking a break I tried out some guitar chords that I thought would work for this other, more uplifting, chanting melody stuck in my head. The result would always make me smile – a bit corny and pastiche, yet quite bombastic and oozing with a fair bit of “fuck yeah”. I envisioned the music as a tongue-in-cheek flirt with the classic Western themes, and music lovers will notice the Ennio Morricone homage. Contrary to what one may think I did not directly use his music as inspiration, but rather dug far and deep into my childhood memories of what Western movies sounded like. I guess those memories just stuck really hard.

The deep chanting did not really feel “Western” enough however, and I would need a more iconic lead instrument. I asked myself if I felt like a lucky punk, which I did, and that stroke of luck gave birth to the idea of using human whistling. I painted grand pictures in my head of what the production would sound like, with cowboy boots and pickaxes as percussion and mariachi trumpets and guitars as background colors. Everything accompanied by glitchy electronic sounds and robot choirs of course. “This track will surprise the team when I get the gig”, I thought.

Alas, I never did. Oh, no! The idea was pushed into the back of my mental drawer, and boy was I sad this charming piece of music would never see the light of day. I moved on, forgot, forgave and went to find myself while backpacking in Africa. When I got home I was going to start anew.

But, in the spring of 2013 I got an interesting e-mail from the nice folks at Image & Form. They were putting the finishing touches on SteamWorld Dig and needed a last minute track for the game – the main theme. Did I have any ideas? “Yeah,” I said. “Give me a day or two”.

Jonas Kjellberg is a Swedish experimental electronic music artist, passionate gamer, and freelance game audio composer and sound designer. He is currently working on the soundtrack for the adventure game Paradigm, currently on Kickstarter.

Following its success on Nintendo 3DS™, SteamWorld Dig now comes to Wii U™! We’ve listened to our fans and we’ve finally made it happen! The game will be released on the Nintendo eShop on August 28 in Europe, Australia and the Americas. It will run in smooth 60 FPS with beautiful HD graphics (1080p) and have support for both off-TV play and the Wii U Pro Controller. Get ready to dig in!

Image & Form and Nintendo go way, WAY back. We released our first game on a Nintendo console back in 2010 (SteamWorld Tower Defense) and a lot of us at Image & Form are major Nintendo fans 🙂 So to finally get to release on Wii U feels amazing!

SteamWorld Dig for Wii U will be available at $9.99 / €8.99 / £6.99. A steal!

Compared to the Nintendo 3DS version from last year, this release has:

The cat’s outta the bag: SteamWorld Dig is coming to Wii U™. That’s right! No kidding. No need to pinch yourself. Pinky swear. We listen to each and every one of you, and the number one request we’ve gotten by far is to let you next-gen Nintendo console gamers get some of our dirt-diggin’ steampunk cowbot action adventure game. Frankly, we’ve always wanted to. And now that we’re Wii U developers (maybe you saw our teaser last week?) we can finally make it happen!

We think Wii U is perfect for SteamWorld Dig for two reasons:

You guys have asked for it.

We’re massive Nintendo fans.

We’re aiming for a fall 2014 release and are overjoyed by the fact that we’ll soon have our very first release on a Nintendo home console! It may relate to the fact that most of us at Image & Form have been major Nintendo fans since childhood. And judging from all the Nintendo stuff around our office you’d think we’re at the Nintendo HQ in Kyoto!

Wii U is a powerhouse, which is extremely cool. The Wii U™ GamePad and Miiverse™ are fun to explore but we’ve yet to decide on how we’ll utilize them. Anyway we’re certain that SteamWorld Dig is perfect for Wii U. We’ll share more details with you, such as release date, price and other cool stuff, in the coming months.

Please, be excited!

We showed you ours, now it’s time for you to show us your Nintendo stuff! Games, toys, figurines, magazines, consoles… anything! Why not snap a pic and share it with us in the comments? 😀

Howdy, diggers! Between today and Sunday we’re slashing the price of SteamWorld Dig on Steam in HALF. That means you can get your hands on SteamWorld Dig for PC, Mac and Linux for $4.99 (or the equivalent). Not only that, but in celebration of the 50% discount we’re releasing some new exciting content for you. Exclusively on Steam you can now purchase the official SteamWorld Dig Original Soundtrack for $0.99. The album contains all nine top notch tunes from the game, composed and recorded by two ace-high composers: Mattias Hammarin and Jonas Kjellberg.

Did you know you can listen to the whole shebang right here?

Isn’t the album art lovely? If you’ve listened to the songs and can’t live without them (or just are in the mood for sending us a dollar for some sweet music), why not buy the OST from the SteamWorld Dig page on Steam? We’re looking into if we’re able to release the soundtrack on iTunes and Spotify as well. But it’s more complicated than we initially thought. So until we’ve figured it out, I hope Soundcloud and Steam is enough to quench your thirst for tones. At least for a while ;D

On May 3rd SteamWorld Dig will be playable at the retro game convention in Sweden called Retrospelsmässan. It’s Scandinavia’s largest convention for retro gaming and takes place in Eriksbergshallen in Gothenburg. As a visitor you can try retro games, buy merchandise and participate in gaming competitions. Many other exciting events will of course take place throughout the day as well.

At the convention there will also be some indie developers and SteamWorld Dig will be amongst the games showcased. We’ll set up a computer and let the visitors try it out but that’s not enough! If you just take a few minutes and answer a few questions regarding the convention we’ll send you a Steam key!

I will be there and so will some of the developers so send us a tweet us and we’ll meet up! 🙂

Today marks a milestone in the history of Image & Form; The first release ever on a home console! SteamWorld Dig is now released on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. The price is set at $9.99 in the US and 8.99€ in the EU. The game will be featured in Sony’s Spring Fever promotion on PSN with a 20% discount to PlayStation Plus members for the first week. SteamWorld Dig will have support for multiple language as well as a cross-buy feature for PS4 and Vita allowing SteamWorld Dig to be played on both consoles.

“This is our first release ever on a stationary console, and a long-standing dream of ours. So many PlayStation gamers have asked us to bring the game to their hardware, and we can’t wait to join the community both on PS4 and Vita. We have a fantastic following on 3DS and Steam, and now we will reach a whole new audience. We are really very excited.” – Brjann Sigurgeirsson. CEO Image & Form

So if you haven’t tried it already. Go to the PlayStation store and get the game today!

SteamWorld Dig for the 3DS is currently 50% off in the Nintendo 3DS eShop. If you haven’t tried it yet you should get it right away. Or maybe get an extra copy for your friend or grandma? The game will be on sale until March 16 so hurry up if you want to get a copy for that prize! 🙂

Finally we can reveal the dates for our much-anticipated release of SteamWorld Dig for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. SteamWorld Dig will be released on March 18 in America and March 19 in the EU. The list price is $9,99 (US) and 8,99€ (EU), but will be available at a 20% discount to PlayStation Plus members for the first week. Starting on the launch date, the game will also feature in Sony’s Spring Fever promotion on PSN.

SteamWorld Dig will be available in a slew of strange, wonderful languages and will also be cross-buy, which is nice: buy the game on either platform, and get it for free on the other as well. It will run at a smooth 60 fps in native resolutions on PS4 and Vita.

Hearing us rant about the incredible reception for the 3DS and Steam versions – or how SteamWorld Dig became a multiple GOTY nominee and winner – can get tiresome and braggish. Therefore, listen instead to some feedback on the news that SteamWorld Dig is coming to PSN. We announced this through the official PlayStation.Blog a few weeks ago:

– “Can’t wait to buy this game it looks Great!”

– “This is perhaps some of THE BEST news I’ve heard in a long time!!! Saying this game will be perfect on the Vita is the understatement of the century!!”

– “Picked this up on PC over the holiday and played the hell out of it. Looking forward to playing it again and collecting trophies!”